I try to contact my representatives regularly. (I aim for at least once a week, although I don't always manage that.)
Sometimes I have a topic in mind when I call, but sometimes it's helpful for me to find out what issues are most urgent - for example, what's being voted on this week.
To find out what's urgent, I check one of my favorite sources for Action Alerts.
Today, I checked the Take Action Now page at the Indivisible website.
Their top issue was contacting your Attorney General about ICE overreach.
So here's what I did:
- find the contact: I looked up my Attorney General (actually, I already had him in my spreadsheet, along with contact info).
- learn more: I took a quick look at the AG website to find out how my AG has been responding to ICE abuses; in my case, my AG is doing great, so this contact will be more to say thank you, along with a request to keep doing what he's doing and take further action whenever he can.
- prepare my script: I took a moment to write down what I wanted to say. In this case, I started by saying thank you for the things he's done so far (lawsuit, providing great resources about immigrant rights), and then asking for the things suggested in that ICE overreach link (file legal challenges, demand transparency, and reinforce sanctuary protections and protections at schools and churches).
- make contact: my spreadsheet has the email page and phone number. I felt more like sending email than making a call today, so I copied my talking points into an email and sent it off.
The more I do this, the faster it goes.
I'm lucky to have representatives who are standing up for everyone's rights. I think it's important for the folks who are doing good work to hear appreciation from their constituents, just as it's important for the folks who are not serving their constituents to hear from us too.
Things you can do
You can do this too:
- find your attorney general (and add them to your spreadsheet if you haven't already)
- learn more about how they've been responding to ICE overreach (check their press releases or use a web search)
- write down what you want to say (the ICE overreach link has good starting points)
- call or send an email
Thank you for speaking out!
